DocuSign Benchmark Research

Over the summer of 2016, I interned at DocuSign as a UX researcher. I led and conducted their first ever benchmark usability study to address the problems of sending /signing a document for first time users.

Role: UX Researcher

Time Taken: 2-3 Months

*Work is under NDA and cannot be be shared or distributed to public facing spaces.

Using the data I collected from usability studies, I validated the company's assumptions on what features we needed to prioritize before the next shipping date. With the user data, I synthesized and created design recommendations centering them around the significant findings of users struggling to use our product. I also compared the features of all products by analyzing the flow of their interfaces and creating design cases around them to further validate the user pains I saw in usability studies. I helped my stakeholders, PMs and design teams decide which features to work on to create a more streamlined experience of their product.

next steps

My research findings helped the VP of Product ship the Fall Releaseversion of DocuSign. My research is continually used internally to help the research and design teams improve the sending + signing product experiences.

Learnings

Doing UX research is essential, from assessing design and business decisions to creating/improving products.

In order to understand/reach un-met needs, doing market research is a must to drive growth and progress. Because of the amount of research DocuSign does to create features relevant to their target audience or even leveraging their product towards a new group of people, updates are shipped to continue growth and increase exposure of the product's value. As of winter 2016, DocuSign launched their recent product with more than 70 enhancements and updates which includes a cleaner, simpler and more intuitive experience. They also received an award for competitive strategy innovation in digital signatures as compared to their competitors, "they leverage creative product strategies that differentiate itself from others on the market".

I learned how to keep people in the loop with my work with constant communication.

weekly progress reports about what I did and my plan for each week

This helped my team as well as the people I worked with understand where I was in terms of the progress and what I was learning. For my research, I included stakeholders in the process as they played an important part in the project and I wanted to provide them to contribute as well. Examples of this is scheduling talks to be able to talk about the project, giving them context and the benefit of it for them and the company. I also invited them to watch the research sessions if they had time to be able to observe users use our product. This helped my stakeholders keep up to date with the project since they were very busy.

Transparency is super important as it builds trust with how we collaborate and increase customer delight.

I learned to ask for help/advice, so I could improve in the work I was producing and make sure my co- workers were aware of my progress, from start to finish. If I made any mistake, I would talk it out with one of my teammate and ask them for advice to mediate it. By building trust with our customers, we are also building trust with our co-workers and that is what helps us grow. how our work is benefiting our users and increasing customer satisfaction.

Overall...

From working at Docusign this past summer, I learned that instead of "I", working in a company is about "We" and embracing my role in helping my teammates and customers. I am very thankful to have worked in such an open environment where I could easily talk to my team and other co-workers for advice and feedback on my work. If I had more time, I would have loved to collaborate with some of my co-workers on projects and work on more projects.